Aging India: How Social Clubs, Travel, Kitty Parties, and Cultural Activities Help Elderly Stay Connected

In the past six months, I made two trips to Odisha to be with my ailing mother. The second trip this month was necessitated, when my 90-year-old mother in Cuttack fell and was too scared to stand up and walk, even with the help of a walker and two caregivers. Since then I have been thinking about the predicament of older people in the fast-changing Indian society with single families as the norm. 

In middle-class urban India, children have left their homeland for higher studies and better job opportunities. Many of them, like me, are doing long-distance care, frequently visiting their elderly parents in India. 

In Odisha, older adults are taking up social clubs and have devised community-based support for themselves. Yet, retirement homes are not very popular in the state even though they are very successful in West Bengal, Maharashtra, and southern India. 

I have lived in North America for 35 years and have been involved in my mother’s long-distance care for almost three decades. My concern for my mother’s aging process and has given me a deeper perspective on aging in India and the United States. In America, successful aging is the norm, leaving no room for old age dependence. The cultural focus is to stay healthy, fit, and active and maintain individual agency and choice. 

With a rise in diseases like Alzheimer’s, home healthcare in the United States is becoming expensive. Assisted living costs about $10,000 to $12,000 a month, quickly removing savings and resources. In a recent report, The New York Times said that millions of American families are facing daunting life choices — and potential financial ruin — as the escalating costs of in-home care, assisted-living facilities, and nursing homes devour the savings and incomes of older Americans and their relatives. Even among those with $171,365 to $1.8 million in savings at age 65, those with more significant long-term care needs were much more likely to deplete their savings than those who did not need long-term care. 

Meanwhile, in mid-2023, India became the most populous country in the world, surpassing China. It has been classified as an “aging country,” with its 138 million elderly population (aged 60 and above). It is projected to reach 194 million in 2031, a 41 percent increase over a decade, according to 2021 data from the National Statistical Office (NSO) ‘s Elderly in India. By 2050, India will be home to 319 million elderly people, or one in every five Indians above 60. 

These trends, mainly due to declining fertility and rising life expectancy, indicate future vulnerability, including a rise in old-age dependency and reduced support levels for older parents. 

The Census of India has adopted the age of 60 to classify a person as old, which coincides with the retirement age in the government sector. My friends, middle-class professionals who have retired from government and private sectors in the last few years, are very agile and reinventing their lives by joining social clubs to feel a sense of purpose in their lives. They are reconstructing the Hindu traditional stages of life. In the Hindu system, two out of four stages of life are devoted to old age, focusing on detachment and renunciation. In the modern context, older adults are creating a current form of retirement to keep themselves busy and feel useful. 

Day Care Centers for Older Adults

Nonagenarian Krupasindhu Panda, president of the Older Adult Society in Bhubaneswar, told me that senior daycare centers are becoming popular in urban Odisha. The Older Adult Society is a non-profit organization serving independent seniors living in a community, an apartment complex, or a neighborhood. It aims to connect and create a fun environment for the seniors to congregate, eat, play games, and express their talent regardless of age, religion, education, or occupational status.

To understand the role of daycare centers for older adults, I met Dilip Mohanty, secretary of a senior daycare center at Kedar Gauri Apartments, the oldest complex in Bhubaneswar. I was told that out of the 210 families, about 80 of them live alone as their children are away. The senior center has about 60 members, and they meet every evening to play cards, carrom, chess, and‌ socialize. They also engage in morning walks, and yoga, and avail of an open-air gym. Members also meet on the last day of every month, to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries of members with a feast. Durga, one of the members of the senior daycare told me that earlier she never remembered her birthday. But now she enjoys celebrating it with the community. Other activities like discussions on issues related to old age, health awareness camps, and outdoor picnics are also held. There’s communal gardening as well for gardening enthusiasts. These members are financially independent, have healthy relationships with their children, and have chosen to live alone. They were not interested in moving with their adult children and families. Instead, they are pleased that the children are successful in their careers and that these seniors are building a community with a sense of purpose and belonging. 

Self-Care and Organized Networking

Unlike traditional forms of retirement, retired people now take up social clubs, travel, kitty parties, and socio-cultural activities to stay connected. Retirement, instead of leading to the end of life, becomes a potential new beginning, where, for the first time, people consider life’s purpose. People now actively craft their lives as self-conscious agents and feel empowered after retirement. 

Every morning, during my daily walks in the parks in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, I would see older men and women practicing yoga. Besides these free yoga practices for older adults, temples offer daily spiritual discourse, followed by lunches and dinners. With these paces, the elderly have created socio-cultural support groups where they can spend time with one another. 

In Bhubaneswar, two enthusiastic women in their 50s have started the Silver Age Foundation for Elders to engage them in self-care activities like walking, yoga, stretching, dancing, Jazzercise, singing, knitting, sewing, cooking, community outreach, outdoor trips, Zumba, and travels. “Post-retirement, women and men face the empty nest syndrome,” one organizer told me. “Children have moved away, busy with their families in faraway places. Even living within the state, they have no time to be with their parents.” Instead of feeling dependent, older adults are encouraged to nurture an old or new hobby.

New Beginning, New Purpose 

This summer, I was invited to my friend Aarati Biswal’s installation as the president of the Rotary Club of Bhubaneswar. She joined the club after she retired at 60 from a local college in 2018. With both her daughters living independently, she had a lot of time on hand.

Every week, the Rotary Club members participate in various awareness and philanthropic activities. I went to the club to deliver lectures and mingle with the members. These members, primarily retired professionals from various government, non-government, and business circles, have found a way to spend time meaningfully and expand their social circle.

During my time in India, I met many friends who have moved back to Bhubaneswar after retirement in faraway cities. Many of these retired professionals have their children living abroad. One of them is Dr. Bhagaban Prakash, who moved back from Delhi in 2019 to his hometown where his extended family lives. None of his children live close by; two daughters live in California, and the third lives in Delhi. The daughters in California are eager to bring him and his wife to live with them, but Prakash is reluctant. ‘What will I do in California?’ he wonders.

Prakash says his social life is hectic. He helped develop a few well-established NGOs and is always sought after for meetings and celebrations with the people. He also writes a weekly column on various social issues in an Odia newspaper. Both he and his wife are ‌in good health, and his brother-in-law is a doctor who serves them at home for any ailment. Life is whole, leaving no room to transplant himself to a foreign land to be with his daughters.

Deepa Padhi, in her 70s, having retired as a professor of philosophy, finds herself with a new purpose as the president of the State Theosophical Order of Service. She runs several non-profit ventures to educate bright girls, promotes livelihood training for young women among the marginalized, and provides services in local nursing homes. For the first time in Bhubaneswar, Padhi has started a second-hand clothing and household goods store, Sambedana, the proceeds of which go to educate poor, bright young women. 

Dr. Bijoya Mishra, in her 80s, a retired principal from a local college, runs Mamata, a non-profit organization (NGO) started by her and her deceased husband. Mamata focuses on empowering marginalized girls and women. She lives in a beautiful home in Bhubaneswar, which she shared with her husband, a senior IAS officer, who passed away after his retirement in 2019. Both her daughters live in the U.S. Although she spends six months with her older daughter in the Bay Area, she runs her NGO on WhatsApp. She organizes various activities and mobilizes its members to be engaged in activities such as helping the girls in an orphanage, providing aid to a home for the destitute, and providing awareness camps on health and education and other issues. She prefers to live in Bhubaneswar where she has an active social life with her extended family and friends.

A senior administrative officer in his 80s has been living in  Bhubaneswar with his wife after retirement from Delhi. Their daughter, Sona (name changed upon request), the only child, lives in the Midwest with her family. But since COVID-19, she has been spending six months a year with her parents to take care of their failing health. She says her parents live in an apartment complex in Bhubaneswar where they know one another. A few years ago, they decided to convert their residential plot to an apartment complex and invited many of their friends to join them in the 16-unit complex. Since her father was in and out of the hospital during the pandemic, Sona made a conscious decision to be with them for part of the year. She wants to start a home health assistance service to cater to older people. She finds the existing services like U.S.-based Sensicare, which runs on a yearly subscription to provide home care service, could be more adequate and efficient. 

Dr. Jyotsna Mohapatra and her husband, who are in their late 70s, live in an apartment complex in Bhubaneswar. They visit their children in North America, but their comfort is living in their home in Bhubaneswar. Both are very involved in the senior activity center in their apartment complex. Mohapatra is involved in the Rotary Club and has a public presence as a retired academic. They have many extended family in Bhubaneswar, so they prefer to live here and visit North America periodically.

As regards my mother, who turned 90 this year, has many health complaints, but she is still content with her social networking and 60 betelnuts a day. 

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Annapurna Devi Pandey teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was a postdoctoral fellow in social anthropology at Cambridge University, the U.K. Her current research interests include diaspora studies, South Asian religions, and immigrant women’s identity-making in the diaspora in California. In 2017-18 she received a Fulbright scholarship for fieldwork in India. Dr. Pandey is also an accomplished documentary filmmaker. Her 2018 award-winning documentary “Road to Zuni,” dealt with the importance of oral traditions among Native Americans.